Who Uses GrubHub to Order Food from Downey’s?

Downey’s at Front and South streets in Center City Philadelphia. (Photo: Dan McQuade)

It’s been a rough decade for Downey’s.

The bar filed for bankruptcy in September 2010. The next year, inspectors found rat carcasses at the restaurant — two days before St. Patrick’s Day and just before the bar went on Jon Taffer’s Bar Rescue.

Founded by Jack Downey in 1976, the bar was long a hangout for Irish Philadelphians. Downey sold it to his chef, Domenico Centofanti, in 2003. By the time it was on Bar Rescue, the bar was struggling. Centofanti said the closure of Front Street cut his business in half.

“This was absolutely the worst and dirtiest restaurant I’ve ever set foot in,” Brian Duffy, a former chef who helped try to return the bar to its past glory on Bar Rescue, said at the time. “There was trash in the hallways. Dead lobsters everywhere. The walk-in fridge was more like an air conditioner. The products in there were rancid. It was 52 degrees and it’s supposed to be under 40. It’s like throwing a festival for bacteria.”

Downey’s had been named the Worst Irish Bar in America.

Things settled down for a while. Last year, though, the building went up for sale. Earlier this year, the bar closed. Downey’s owed more than $80,000 in back taxes and penalties and was facing sheriff’s sale, though Centofanti declared personal bankruptcy to stave off the sale.

Now, word comes from the Inquirer’s Michael Klein that Downey’s is back in business — at least for food delivery. The LCB took the pub’s liquor license in November. Downey’s had been operating without a license, but recently reached an agreement with the city’s Revenue Department allowing the bar to re-open.

“Despite the lack of licensing, Downey’s had been selling food for some time via Grubhub, based on the dates of its online reviews,” Klein writes. “An inspector called the Downey’s phone number listed on GrubHub and spoke with a person who confirmed that the kitchen was being used to prepare orders for delivery. The business was then shut down.”

The penalty for operating without a food license, a violation of the health code, is up to $300. Spokeswoman Karen Guss tells Philadelphia magazine L&I is more concerned with compliance than with fines; Downey’s struck a deal with Philadelphia’s Revenue Department to begin paying past money owed to the city so it could re-open. L&I does not often do proactive sweeps for code violations, but acted on Downey’s after learning it was operating on GrubHub.

No offense to the bar, but: Who uses GrubHub to order food from Downey’s? This is a place that’s known for being named the Worst Irish Bar in America. It’s in Center City, where the delivery options are practically limitless. (A quick scan shows more than 300 options right now.)

A survey of the social media landscape found just one recent tweet about ordering from the bar, though the time it was sent — 12:40 a.m. — offers a clue. Downey’s hours on GrubHub are from 6 p.m. to 4:15 a.m. People order from Downey’s when they have no other options.

Ordering delivery late at night, from anywhere, is fraught with peril. It might take forever. You might pass out. And the food might be cold. A sampling of reviews shows some trepidation about Downey’s: “I love food but if you order from here it will take over an hour [to] deliver so i suggest you order from somewhere else.” I love food, but is a tough sentence opening to type.

“They said their driver was robbed, so they had a rough night,” another review says, “but that doesn’t excuse the bad pizza.” (Despite being an Irish bar, it now serves Italian and American fare.) Still, many reviews say the food is pretty good, even if it takes a while to get there. It does have 2 ½ stars out of 5. Best wishes to their driver.

Downey’s [Phillymag]